Googling Hernando

Who out there has ever “Googled” themselves? Come on now, be honest. We’ve all done it at least once. I, for one, do it weekly to see if I’ve accomplished something unawares or been discovered. So far, nothing.

I’ve been trying to find out who Hernando de Aguirre (the namesake of the street where we live) was. I was hoping that maybe he was a great warrior, the first president of the country, or an inventor who discovered something great like “scrubby bubbles”. But apparently, he only discovered a street.

And a dirty street it is. Living in a small apartment means our dirt has less room to spread out. So when Ximena, our cuinado came for the first time last week, she had quite a chore ahead of her. Thank heavens for those bubbles.

With all the joy a clean house brings, I took the day off with a visiting friend, Jenni, and went to Isla Negra to visit the house of Pablo Neruda, a Nobel Prize winning poet and a national treasure (albeit a dead one). He collected everything from bottles and seashells, to ship figureheads and masks, and even a life-size papier-mache horse. A very accomplished man, but I’d hate to have to dust his house.

To make things easier on myself, I plan on investing in the table-bed seen here. Someone had the brilliant idea to combine my two favorite pastimes while confining the space you need to clean when done. Someone intelligent thought of that one. Maybe it was Hernando.

By this point in my life, I was hoping to discover my purpose that would make me Google-worthy. This week I am feeling particularly gloomy about my failure on this front. I make less money than my cuinado, have never invented anything, and cannot papier-mache a horse. But, I’ve discovered that getting old is better than the alternative, and as long as I have time, I have hope.

Sisma